In recent years, with the explosive increase in the number of people using the Internet, demands originating from business enterprises or individuals are increasing rapidly for setting up Web pages, and linking them to the WWW (World Wide Web) to disseminate and collect various information.
However, in order to set up Web pages, in addition to having specialized knowledge of Internet-related technology such as hypertext, it is necessary to create Web page content, that is, the information included on a Web page, and perform various additional operations such as designing Web pages, and as a result, every user accessible to the Internet cannot always set up Web pages as desired.
Also, various kinds of Web page creation support software for creating Web pages visually without the need to be aware of the technical aspects such as a structure of hypertext are widely used. However, in order to use Web page creation support software, some knowledge of computers and the Internet, etc. is required, thus every Internet user cannot yet freely use Web page creation support software.
Furthermore, even for an individual who knows how to create Web pages, or a business enterprise employing such a person, it is often difficult to assign the personnel exclusively to creating Web pages, which is not the aim of enterprise activity from the point of human cost vs. its effect.
Under these situations, in recent years, so-called Web page creation contract business which creates Web pages on behalf of individuals or business enterprises that want to set up Web pages in accordance with their taste and requests have been in the limelight.
However, Web page creation is complicated even in the case of using a Web page creation contractor as described above. This means that the Web page creation requester (hereinafter, referred to as a customer) and a Web page creator (hereinafter, referred to as a creator) communicate directly or indirectly via telephone or e-mail, and the work proceeds such that the creator creates Web pages stepwise in accordance with the customer's demands.
In doing so, in order to create high-quality Web pages, it is necessary to carry out a process in which a customer and creator talk each other, and the creator creates Web pages, and then the customer gives back the feedback. Besides, this process needs to be repeated for several times until the both sides are content. Consequently, it takes a lot of time for the Web pages to be completed, thus the creation administrative cost is added to the creation cost, which is the minimum cost needed for creating Web pages. This becomes the factor boosting up the final cost for creating Web pages.
Also, sales activities are indispensable if a Web page creation contractor is to carry on business continuously, but the sales depend on human power. Specifically, a sales personnel (often in charge of a creator as well) needs to communicate customers directly or indirectly, and to receive Web page creation orders from customers continuously, thus the cost required for these sales activities is added as sales cost to the creation cost of Web pages, and thus becomes the factor boosting up the final cost additionally for creating Web pages.
The present invention is made in order to overcome the above-described and other problems of the conventional technology.
In this regard, in this specification, a “customer” merely represents an individual person or business enterprise representing a requester of Web page creation. Similarly, in this specification, a “creator” merely represents an individual person or business enterprise representing a creator of Web pages. Particularly, in this specification, when using a term “customer terminal unit” or “creator terminal unit”, in conjunction with the elements constituting the present invention, the term represents a terminal unit such as a computer capable of network connection and having functions as a client of the Web page creation support unit which is used by a “customer” or “creator”.